Friday 22 August 2014

Uncontroversial Jam

My last post was about Himalayan Balsam honey, and honey harvest in general and for me, this is a bit of a tricky area. However, jam-making is a thoroughly wholesome activity, as foraging for berries and using windfallen or excess fruit to have in the winter months is a wonderful way to remind ourselves of the seasons and reconnect with our environment.

There is a colossal patch of brambles in the paddock where I have some hives, and I'm fortunate to have three rather ancient apple tree espaliers in the garden. Another garden where I work and look after bees has plum, damson and apple trees, so as a result of the pollination services, there is usually an excellent fruit crop which in my book means one thing: JAM.


I have already made about fifteen jars of bramble and apple jelly, which I confess I find easier than jam. Simply wash and cut up the apples; core, skin, pips and all. Wash the blackberries and add enough water to stop them catching. Cook until thoroughly soft and pulpy, although if you're using eating apples you may have to help this along once they're soft by giving them a good squidge with a potato masher. Strain the resulting gloop through a jelly bag for about 12 hours in to a jug or bowl, or until every last scrap of juice has filtered out, but don't be tempted to squeeze the bag or you'll end up with cloudy jelly. Even though you may not be entering your preserve for the local show, the clear, jewel-like quality of bramble jelly is one of its charms.

Measure out your liquid and for every 10 parts of juice, you'll need 7 parts of sugar, so 1 litre of liquid will require 700g of regular granulated white sugar. Warm the liquid in a large heavy-based saucepan, or preserving pan if you have much more than 1.5 litres of juice. Add the sugar and stir slowly until dissolved and pop your sugar thermometer in now if you use one and a small plate into the freezer if you don't. Also put your jars in the oven to sterilise. Then crank up the heat and bring to a rolling boil - this, if you're anything like me, is where you discover you should have used a preserving pan as the vat of scalding bubbling magenta comes dangerously close to spilling over your stove...

Once it reaches near setting point, which should be after about 10 minutes at a full terrifying boil without stirring, test the jelly. If you've a jam thermometer it will be at the temperature for jam (!) but I adopt a belt, braces and additional belt policy and have a thermometer, and a plate, and use the flake test too. To carry out the plate test, drop a few blobs of liquid on to the plate and wait a minute or two for it to cool (hence putting it in the freezer) and then give it a prod with your finger see if it has jellified. The flake test is where you pick up a spoonful of liquid on your wooden spoon and again, wait for a minute. If, when you turn the spoon over to deposit the liquid back in to the pan, it sort of flops off in a big blob, then you've reached setting point. Remove the pan from the heat and using a ladle and funnel, pour in to your hot jars and screw the lids on quick (remember the jars are hot!) so that they form a good seal.

Jam is made by preparing your fruit, so peeling, coring, chopping, de-stoning as necessary, then weigh it before placing in a preserving pan. Add a small amount of water to prevent it catching, then heat gently and simmer until the fruit is soft. Then add an equal quantity of sugar to fruit and bring to the boil and continue as for jelly until setting point is reached where you can once again deploy the cold plate technique. Once it's ready, jar up as above.

Softening apples, damsons, plums, blackberries
and elderberries for Autumn Jam
A note about pectin: this substance naturally occurs in plant cells walls, and reacts when heated with the fruit and sugar to form a gelling agent which binds the jam or jelly together. Some fruits contain a lot of pectin, others less so. All the fruits I preserve happen to be high in pectin so I don't use additional pectin, lemon juice or specific jam sugar, and I quite like the natural soft set of home made jams and jellies anyway. However, do check before embarking on your own recipe as it will not set if there's insufficient pectin and you'll end up with fruit glue. I've been there.

Wednesday 13 August 2014

Controversial Honey

My bees have had a great summer with all this hot weather. I think some of the larger hives may have swarmed but I've not noticed a great reduction in bee numbers, or productivity. There have been so many wonderful forage flowers nearby for them; field beans, brambles, bird's-foot trefoil and clover to name a few. There are large swathes of Himalayan Balsam along the river that the bees visit intensively and come back wearing a brand of pollen. As an invasive alien weed, it's not viewed favourably by conservation/river management groups as it shades out native plants, dies back in winter leaving riverbanks vulnerable to erosion and spreads its seeds voraciously. However, it is a forage plant nonetheless and the bees work it to their advantage. I'm sure they (and all of us!) would be just as happy with varied indigenous flora should that abound our watercourse margins but with nitrogen runoff and other contenders making local streams rather poor in biodiversity, HB it is...

I take a box of honey off the top of my hives when it's full, which works out at about every 5-6 weeks during the season so I may take up to three 'crops'. This means that the bees always have enough and I can judge whether the honey is spare by the numbers of bees and amount of space they have, as well as cross-referencing these factors with weather and amount of forage around. It sounds complicated but it really isn't...basically the bees' needs must always be met first, as they store honey for their own use throughout the year, but especially over winter. For this reason, I don't take any honey after the end of July as this gives the bees a clear 2-3 months to refil the frames with decent honey. I also leave room above the top board (the crownboard) as they can then build 'wild' comb if they need the space. Late flowering garden plants and ivy are important for the latter part of the year.

Harvesting little and often also means the honey varies over the season. These two batches were only a month apart:

Himalayan Balsam honey on the left, regular
floral honey on the right
It is a bit of a palaver harvesting such small amounts over the course of the summer, which is why many beekeepers harvest at the end of August. The problem with this is that it is difficult to know what sort of autumn or spring we're going to have, which means they usually have to feed sugar syrup to replenish the bees' supplies. Indeed, many honey producers remove all the honey the bees have produced and feed sugar syrup anyway. The bees do convert these simple sugars in to a thicker product to store in the frames, but it is a long, long way from the floral honey they've collected and has none of the medicinal properties of the nectar from which honey is made. All this at a time when the bees are under the most stress having to deal with low temperatures, damp and dwindling numbers of bees during the colder months.

Some beekeepers advocate a policy of not removing any honey and in some hives it is not possible anyway without severe disruption to the colony. My bees are housed in National hives which are designed to have honey removed from them, and I feel if it is genuinely surplus and the bees are fit and strong, it does no harm to the colony and a jar of raw honey can have huge benefits as a tool for persuading people against the bland, homogenous 'honey' available generally.

It's delicious straight from the spoon or on toast, can be medicinal - it's great to have honey and lemon to soothe a sore throat, or to help reduce your sensitivity to pollen for hayfever sufferers. It's a seasonal treat to be enjoyed and savoured and the price should reflect this. There will be a far smaller harvest from hives that keep their honey, but the bees will be healthier and happier.